Hiding Sub-Reports in Power BI App

[andres777]

I used to be able to hide all Paginated Report (sub-reports) in the Power BI App, now, with the current version, it seems they only run if they are visible, is that a bug ?

Don't want to show subreports in the App interface, since many of our paginated reports have 20-30 subreports...
(sorry, I'm converting 2500 SAP BO webi and Crystal Reports into Power BI Paginated Reports, the design was done already)

[richard-howard8]

This has now been fixed it seems. New setting has appeared in the app. 

[andres777]

One Year Later ...
For Microsoft, the Solution for this issue seems very simple to understand (maybe not to code...)
Create 2 menu options:
- Hide Report/File
- Hide Sub-Report
The program will then recognize that hidden sub-reports (using the 2nd option) should be treated as visible reports inside the App, but still visually remain hidden, unless you edit the App.
And Allow the Main Paginated Report to call the hidden sub-reports like normal (used to work this way before)

[richard-howard8]

This does not seem to work for me? Did you did this inside an app? 

Can you send a screen shot of your setup?

[andres777]

Sorry,
This was a suggestion to Microsoft coding people, so they implement it in future release... hopefully

[dustinaskinpbi]

Hi all, will you please vote on the following idea on idea.powerbi.com? And add comments on your scenario. We've started to hear requests for this and wanted to try and capture requests and scenarios in a central place, thank you. 🙌

Revival of report hiding feature in New App UI

Microsoft Idea (powerbi.com)

[dlgada]

We are having same issue. I had to unhide the SubReport from App in order for the main report to work. Did you find any work around for this issue.

[PositiveDiff]

We are having the same issue. The 'old' way we used to be able to publish sub reports into the app but hide them and the report ran fine. The new upgraded experience rolled out this month now requires the subreports to be visible in order for the main report to run. 

This isn't great because now all users can see the subreports in the list. How can we hide subreports inside apps and still allow the main report to run?

[rzanoni]

Hi, we are facing the same issue after this upgrade. Did you find any solution on this? Can't understand why Microsoft changed that. Appreciate any help. Cheers.

[dlgada]

Below is the reply I got from Microsoft Support. I don't agree with their solution of hiding the entire navigation pane as we have multiple Power BI reports and Paginated reports in one App. From their reply it seems there is no fix for this one in near future. 

As a workaround, we are putting all our Sub Reports under header called Sub Reports in the App so that business users are aware not to click those report directly. Looks like we may have to live with it until Microsoft fixes this issue.
"

We did some research and found out that the situation that you are facing is a known PBI app limitation for the new App experience and hidden artifacts (this affects not only paginated reports but regular reports as well)

Support encountered other organizations reporting the hide/unhide sub-reports situation with the Product Group team and we received a response, see below:
 
"Thank you for your feedback and we understand your concern. Please note that due to low usage, we decided to disable the switch to hide nav pane and hide an item. We are working to understand what the best way is to allow app authors to hide the left navigation pane. Once this feature is rolled out, the app authors would be able to hide the left nav pane by default for their end consumer. Please note that this will not allow app authors to hide just a single report/content. But we believe this would address your concern. You could put the dashboard as the first item for your users and once this hide nav option is released, your consumers would land on the dashboard which references a report and will be able to jump to the referenced report if they have access to it. "
 
Deepak Gada, as informed above, the Product Group is working on a fix to be release to address this but there is no specific ETA, the closest ETA that we have gotten is towards the end of December 2022.

"

[Anonymous]

please see post below and mark as accepted if so

• Images are in a following post \ reply

Create a folder - name "SubFolders"

move the reports to the "Sub Folder" folder

Rename the subfolder to " "   (a single space)
Publish

[rzanoni]

Well, so let's wait to the end of this year to see if a new feature will be available to deal with that. Meanwhile it could be possible to get back the previeous release of the published app.

[andres777]

Exactly! - that's what we are doing as well.
I just wish Microsoft didn't take the hiding functionality away for sub-reports, it used to work fine.
Hiding the left pane does not solve the issue, as most users do not have 1 report per App, so multiple reports and sections need to be visible for the interface to work.

[AllardBon]

Hi Binbin Yu,

The problem -in my opinion- is as follows: some reports need a subreport. You don't want to show the subreport in the app for your users but when you make it invisible, the main report doesn't find it anymore and the error message 'subreport not found on location' is shown. When you make the subreport visible, everything works fine.

[Anonymous]

Create a folder - name "SubFolders"

move the reports to the "Sub Folder" folder

Rename the subfolder to " "   (a single space)
Publish

[AllardBon]

Thanks, for the workaround, David.

Very annoying that Microsoft considers hiding subreports 'low priority'. It looks to me that many Paginated-Reports-builders face the same issue.

[v-binbinyu-msft]

Hi @andres777 ,

I want to confirm something with you, what is the meaning about  "hide all Paginated Report (sub-reports) in the Power BI App"?  If you don't want to show Paginated Report with someone, you only need don't add it to Power BI App when you create App.

If I have misunderstood your request, please feel free to let me know.

Best regards,
Community Support Team_ Binbin Yu
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[andres777]

The way sub-reports work, is that they must be part of the App, or the main report will not be able to find them. the issue is that it used to be possible to click on the hide button, and the main report would still be able to find them in the App, making the interface cleaner. Instead of showing 1 main report and 20 sub-reports, it was possible to show only the Main report. the only workaround I found was to put all the sub-reports in its own section, and collapse that section,  so users can find the main reports only and not get confused with 21 entries, but 1